


winter's never cold (when you're around)

by glitterforplaster (ineffableangel)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Christmas Eve, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hanukkah, Holidays, M/M, Winter, just an excuse for me to make everyone gay and traumatized, this isn't late it's still hanukkah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffableangel/pseuds/glitterforplaster
Summary: No need to bother with my mittens when you're near...(extended superfriends holiday fluff)





	

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers for winn's backstory, and for characters and relationships present in season 2. cw for discussion of bad parents, and vague mentions of murder.

Winn spotted James right away. He was waiting by a lamppost in the park, wearing a yellow knit cap and a coat with a faux fur ruff. The stylish shape of his hands-in-pockets posture and the pure snow falling around him was, to Winn, CatCo cover-worthy, and completely unaware of it. He turned and tucked away his headphones when he saw Winn approaching. “Hey,” he said, flashing his teeth in an involuntary grin that put his camera to shame.

Winn recoiled, taking extra time to peel off his wool gloves and rub theatrically at his eyes. “Whoa, sorry, I was just momentarily blinded.” He tossed his arms in front of him, waving them until James took an obliging step forward and Winn’s hands met the solid embrace of his chest. Winn cracked an eye open to find James smiling down at him, exasperation betrayed by the affectionate arc of his mouth.

Winn scrunched his face up, returned to the conversation he’d interrupted with a soft, “Hi,” and kissed his boyfriend.

James curved his body around Winn. One hand rested over his hip, and the other brushed back a stray, kiss-crushed curl, because even mountains of mousse were no match for superhero/sidekick PDA. The kiss was brief, but they lingered together a little longer, grateful for the timeshare of heat in the Hallmark snow.

“Coffee?” James asked finally. “I passed a place a block back that was selling something called the _Girl of Steam_. I think there’s caramel in it.”

“Yum. We should take a picture for Kara. Will you let me get triple espresso shots in my Americano this time, or is there a life ban?”

“On _sleep_ , maybe, you neurotic little hacker,” James said. “Keep your self-destructive tendencies away from our dates.”

“But how else will I stay up for Santa?” Winn said, dripping sarcasm all over the sidewalk.

James took Winn’s hand, coaxing him down the sleet-slick National City streets, the sky bright and clear, warmed by strands of lights and shop-window displays. “I’ll keep you awake.”

“Oh, Jimothy,” Winn gasped, following. “Is that a promise?”

 

*

 

“Okay, the Christmas Market is magic,” Winn effused, his arm tucked into the loop of James’. They’d been wandering the rows of the annual downtown consumerism extravaganza for over an hour, searching for the perfect gifts for their super friends and their _super_ friends. Alex was getting brass knuckles and a green cashmere sweater, Maggie was getting a shirt that read _Sapphardic,_ Mon-El was getting money since he lacked Earthly possessions, but the question remained: what do you buy the girl who has everything, including heat vision? “Paintings, produce, clothes, _candied nuts_? I love it here. I want to live in it. I want to rent _loft space_ in the gingerbread gelato truck _._ James?”

“Yes, dear?”

“You’re a CEO. You have crisp Benjamins. Buy me a vendor’s tent.”

James looked up from the leather-bound event planner he was considering for Kara. “Okay. But the Christmas Market closes December 26th. You’ll just be a man squatting in National Park after that.”

“You’ve broken my heart,” Winn said, switching his hot chocolate — an entirely espresso-less drink, _thank_ you — to his other hand, extra careful to accommodate the added layer of his gloves. “And stomped on my holiday cheer. That was that shattering sound you just heard. I finally understand what people mean when they talk about the war on Christmas.”

James Olsen was far too poised to snort, but he did exhale quickly through his nose. “Speaking of holiday cheer, are you coming to Kara’s tonight? Maggie’s making sufganiyot.”

“Will Superman be there?” Winn said, at an obnoxiously normal volume. The vendor in front of them startled, but Winn threw her a self-effacing smile, and she returned to her book, assuming he was joking, and not entirely wrong. James bought the planner with a hasty cash handoff that involved extracting his elbow from Winn’s, and they moved on through the stalls. After a moment, stumbling into seriousness, Winn said, “Yeah, I’m coming. I wouldn’t miss it. It’s not like I have another family.”

James stopped walking.

By necessity, Winn stopped too, torso curled over the toasty aura of his cocoa. “What?”

“You just… You don’t talk about it often. Family.”

“Yes, I do. I crack jokes at every possible opportunity. I have, like, proprietary rights to the ‘ _daddy issues_ ’ card in Cards Against Humanity.”

James studied Winn’s face, unwavered by the deflection; he was a journalist, after all, and a superhero. He lived in pursuit of truth. “But you don’t _talk_ about it.”

Winn hesitated, shifting his weight from shoe to shoe. “Do you… want me to?”

Ever the diplomat, and the boyfriend, James answered, “Do you think you even could?”

After a silence, Winn said, breakneck and sharp, as though the words had been exorcised from him, “I can’t look at teddy bears anymore.”

Heart in his throat, Winn held his breath for James to reply, but where he tensed, James softened, waiting for whatever would come next, be it more truth or more deflection— a fact for which Winn was intensely grateful. He was equal parts ashamed of and freed by the confession; even as he told himself he’d never intended for it to escape, he knew he’d been waiting twelve years for the opportunity.

“I—” Winn cleared his throat, moving to allow a customer to pass him, not wanting to bruise eavesdroppers with his childhood injuries. It was difficult to cough up secrets he’d held onto so long they’d worn into his back teeth, like the lock-picking tools of a master thief. “I haven’t been able to… stand them since… It’s so stupid.”

“Winn,” James said, extraordinarily gentle.

“I mean,” Winn continued nervously, unable to stop himself now that he’d started, “a little animal stuffed with cotton, with a— with a bowtie, that’s, like, the embodiment of innocence. And he ruined it. He took the cotton and the fun out and put something  _really_ bad back in. Now instead of huggable friend, I see, like... a _lot_ of blood, and my hero being carted away in handcuffs, and six kids without parents. Seven,” he amended, gesturing cavalierly to himself. Then, reminding himself that this was his boyfriend, trying to keep the bite from his voice— “Okay, alright, sweetheart? I’m gonna need you to stop looking at me like that. Like you want to make me a ‘ _sorry for your loss’_ casserole.”

James covered his eyes. “Sorry. I’ve become one of those neighborhood widows I always hated.”

“No, it’s okay.” Winn, too, scrubbed a hand over his face and kept it there, so that they could both look ridiculous, standing in the middle of the market, the crowd flowing around them. They peeked at each other through their fingers. Apologetic, Winn said, “That was really… sudden, and serious, I didn’t mean to… It’s Christmas Eve. We were talking about a party. Now who’s the Schott ruining stuff?”

“Nothing is ruined,” James assured him. “And the party will still happen. You know, between journalism and the friendships for which I unfortunately owe most of my fame, I’ve spent tons of time in the company of people who play their cards close to their chest. Take it from a, uh—” he lowered his voice, “— _guardian_ of this sort of thing, butsecrets have a way of eating you up inside. Maybe it was time to let them out.”

Winn took a sip of his cocoa. It had a minty aftertaste. “We’re in the way. We should probably move.”

“Winn,” James said, unwilling to give up on this, on Winn, misguided in that stubborn superhero belief that everyone was capable of being saved. “I know you’ve been carrying this alone for a long time. You don’t have to anymore. I can help you shoulder it. If you’ll let me.”

“Well,” Winn said. “You do have Herculean biceps.”

James smiled and shifted his shopping bag so he could wrap his arm around Winn’s waist. “We have a couple hours before we have to get to Kara’s. Why don’t we find a bench somewhere?”

“Why, so you can press it?” Winn asked, trying to fit his entire palm over James’ forearm and only succeeding in nearly tripping them both. “Jesus, they’re bigger than my head.”

They wandered past the end of the market and back into the expanse of snow and trees and seasonally-suspended fake Grecian fountains, until they found a place to rest. Winn shoveled snowfall from the seat by cupping his covered hands, and James put down his waterproof coat to avoid the future hassle of wet clothes, so it was a team effort, although James was left a little cold. They leaned into each other, Winn’s head on James’ shoulder, watching the sun set solstice-early over the skyscrapers, all carnation pink, until Winn felt settled inside, and could speak again.

“Holidays are always hard for me,” he started, keeping his voice low, as if not to break the spell of the evening. “But winter used to be my favorite time of year. I mean, when your dad makes toys for a living, Christmas is a big deal. We’d have, you know, the whole family dinner at home with my mom, but then we’d spend the whole night at his workshop, listening to carols on the radio, tinkering with things, talking… In the morning there’d always be some new prototype, just for me. Most of them were busted, of course, unfinished, but—” Winn huffed; his breath escaped as a crystalline cloud. “But he was trying. It was never hard to believe in Santa when he was right in front of me, heating up leftovers in the microwave, or forgetting his reading glasses on top of his head.” Winn’s smile at the happy memories faded as familiar shadows crowded in from every corner. “After he killed those people, I never had that again. Foster care Christmas sucks. Orphan Christmas sucks more. Even now, every... train set and jack-in-the-box is just a reminder of what I lost. And… the teddy bears…”

James slid his hand into the palm of Winn’s winter glove and lifted it to his face, kissing their intertwined fingers. “We’ve all lost people, Winn. We’re the City of Misfit Toys. But we have each other now— me, you, Kara, Clark. Alex, and Maggie. Even Mon-El. Bad things can make you strong if you let them. The holidays don’t have to hurt.”

Winn’s eyes flickered up to James’ face, down to his mouth, then back across the park, never focusing on a single spot for more than a moment. He was hyper-conscious of the pink patches spilling down his neck and over his ears, the unflattering full-body blush he’d always been cursed with, but it could have easily been the weather, and that was absolutely what he would say if anyone brought it up. “Sometimes you’re so genuine it’s hard to look at you.”

James grinned his lightning grin. “It’s all that time around the House of El.”

“No,” Winn said. “I’m, like, twelve thousand percent sure you’ve always been like this.”

“Winn,” James said, hesitating, and despite his avoidance of classical endearments, in the brief silence the name sounded synonymous with _sweetheart_. “I miss my dad, too.”

Tears welled up in Winn’s eyes, that blindsiding sorrow that inhabited him when the enormity of his grief caught him by surprise, full-body like his blush. It wasn’t enough that life had kicked _him_ in the baby teeth, it had to do the same to the sweetest people on the planet, people who deserved so much better, because they _were_ better, because they were _good,_ the _personifications_ of good, symbols of hope who needed it themselves. Impulsively, Winn kissed James’ cheek, lingering there as if in gesture he could communicate every comfort he couldn’t say. If he were any kind of hero, he’d have turned back time, til they were unbroken boys with unbroken families. But he would’ve had to turn it back pretty far, and he wasn’t any kind of hero— he left that to his friends. He wasn’t good. He was just a mess of a guy, trying to hold onto things before they were gone.

Pulling away again, Winn rubbed at his eye with the heel of his glove, worried his tears might freeze to his face.

James smiled at him. Two Olsen smiles in one day was a lot of radiance and charm for one bitter bisexual to handle. “I thought you said it was hard to look at me.”

Helplessly, Winn smiled back. “It’s harder not to.”

 

*

 

“Winn! James!” Kara cried, throwing open the door to her apartment before they’d even had a chance to knock. She swept them up into a crushing Kryptonian hug; by now used to being careful with the full of extent of her powers, it wasn’t strong enough to do any damage, but Winn still felt a couple of the joints in his neck pop. James fared a little better, not being a delicate wafer of a dude. When she released them, Winn took a fish-gulp of air and pushed her gift at her, hoping to save himself from further well-intentioned bodily harm.

“Oh, my gosh, thank you so much!” Kara said, pushing her glasses up onto her head and taking the brightly-colored package from his hands.

“Hey!” Winn snapped, and she jumped, letting her glasses fall back onto the bridge of her nose. He pointed at her, stern. “Absolutely no X-ray vision. You’ve ruined my last three presents that way. I don’t know what Christmas is like on Krypton, but on Earth, we prefer _some_ element of surprise.”

Kara pouted, but slid the gift into the pocket of her apron and led the pair of them into the apartment. “I know how Christmas works! And, actually, there was no Christmas on Krypton. I mean, obviously we have different religious figures, but even then, we didn’t have anything approaching winter.”

Alex turned and leaned over the back of the couch, gesturing a little carelessly with her eggnog. “The first time this girl saw snow—”

“Babe, you’ve told that story twice tonight, let your sister live,” Maggie said, putting a hand on Alex’s leg to stop her from telling it again, the usual Sawyer grin tucked up into the corner of her mouth. To James and Winn, she said, “Hey. Kara and I were just about to start taking things out of the oven.”

“Need help?” James offered, unbuttoning his coat and removing his sweater to reveal a red t-shirt so criminally tight it may have originally belonged to Winn.

Maggie tilted her head and assessed him. “Yeah, two beefcakes are always better than one.”

“Wait, am I the second beefcake?” Kara asked, confused.

Maggie laughed, neither confirming or denying. They convened to the kitchen, James and Maggie exchanging whispers about the upcoming ordeal of frying Hanukkah pastry. Winn took off his own coat, helped himself to a sugar cookie from the counter, and claimed a spot on the couch. Beside him, her main source of entertainment now gone, Alex played Candy Crush with the sound off.

“The place looks great, Kara,” Winn called over his shoulder, admiring the coils of candy-colored lights and the tree in the corner, its branches drooping with the weight of ornaments. His only answer was the comforting ambient noise of cooking clatter and a festive jazz playlist.

The bathroom door opened from beyond the living room, and Superman stepped out of the hallway, drying his hands on his stone-washed jeans.

“Clark!” Winn blurted, blushing all down his chest. “Um, Kal-El. Um, Super—”

“Hi, Winn,” Clark said, showing mercy. He was wearing a soft blue Star of David sweater, and, like Kara, his glasses; although their identities weren’t much of a secret here, Winn knew how overstimulating the holidays could be, and he understood their desire to keep sensory shutdowns to a minimum. “How are you?”

“Embarrassing myself, as usual. Happy Hanukkah.”

“Thank you,” Clark said, his smile warm and genuine. “ _Chag Sameach_.”

“Dinner’s ready!” Kara called from the kitchen, proudly holding up a huge, steaming ham on a platter with one hand.

“Show-off,” Alex muttered.

Through some Kryptonian feat of arrangement and timing, the seven of them found their places around Kara’s table. Bathed in menorah light, they popped Christmas crackers, and enjoyed the comfortable chewing silence that comes with good food and better company, until Mon-El arrived through the window. He did so loudly, and with the gift of a clumsy forehead kiss for Kara. Kara looked at him with fond puzzlement.

“It’s a Daxamite custom,” he explained enthusiastically, already wearing a paper crown, slightly askew. “Also, I’m a little drunk. So what’s this Kismet thing? When can I expect the large toy grandpa to descend?”

James stifled his laughter with a discreet cough, but it was contagious, and soon became an epidemic. Through a roomful of giggling adults and aliens, Kara pulled up an extra chair beside her and gestured Mon-El into it. His presence made everyone a little bolder; within moments, the apartment was awash with light and laughter.

“I’d like to make a toast,” Kara said with a super-strength grin, lifting her glass. “I know we all have our different traditions, our different foods, and our different experiences. But I feel blessed by every deity in this Chili’s tonight—” another scattering of laughter— “to have them all in one place. You guys are my family.” Kara teared up a little, and Winn and Alex went with her. “My ridiculous, miscellaneous, beautiful family. For a long time, I thought I’d never have that again. So thank you, so much. I love you.”

“To family,” James said, lifting his own glass.

“To family!” everyone echoed.

After that, Maggie excused herself to make desert, Clark engaged Mon-El in a rousing discussion of Daxam, and Kara and Alex picked up a phone call from Eliza, who'd just stepped off her flight.

Winn sat back in his seat, taking in the scene of all these people he loved. He felt warm, and happy, and lucky, all relatively new emotions for him, at least in sequence. When he looked sidelong at James, it was to find James already looking at him, eyes soft. He took Winn’s hand under the table, running his thumb over Winn’s knuckles, and nodded toward Kara’s room in silent invitation. Discreetly enough with everyone otherwise occupied, they escaped to the hallway. When they were out of sight, Winn nudged James up against the wall and kissed him.

James smiled into it, cradling Winn’s face, the pads of his thumbs catching on untended winter stubble. It was that same deliberate, careful way he held his camera, hyper-conscious of his own hands’ ability to harm. So often Winn felt that his softness was a weakness, his sensitivity something to be ashamed of, but being around James, being _with_ James, made him feel like there were more ways to be a man than he’d ever allowed himself to admit; compassionate, beautiful, better ways. James’ vulnerability _was_ his strength. Winn loved him so much he couldn’t have expressed it effusively enough in any of the languages he knew, computer or otherwise.

“Who needs mistletoe?” James asked when they paused for breath.

“Repressed people,” Winn answered, wry. “And as the past twelve years have _certainly_ proven, I’m not one of those.”

“Certainly,” James agreed, and kissed him again, just briefly.

“Can I say something?” Winn asked, pulling back. His voice shook a little, but he wasn’t nervous about spilling his secrets over for the second time that day; he knew, without hesitation, that he could trust James with any messy part of him, a revelation that was strange to come to now, in the calm space beside their best friend’s bedroom, when they’d survived death and destruction together so many times.

“I check on them once in a while,” Winn said, starting too quietly, so that it was barely a whisper; it was the first time he’d ever voiced it. He cleared his throat and clarified, “The kids of the people he killed. I know that’s invasive, and creepy, and an abuse of my admittedly baller hacking skills, but I just want to know if they’re okay— you know, through some perverse, morbid curiosity I can’t seem to shake. Like, if they’re fucked up, then how could _I,_ the son of the man who ruined their lives, deserve—” He flicked his hand in the direction of their friends, the faint laughter and jazz from the front of the apartment. “ _All_ of this wonderful in mine? Everyone in there, all of those friends who love me _._ And you, James, _you_ …” He faltered, each word feeling punched from him. “James, you who _I_ love, who makes me feel safe, not just because you’re a hero but because you’re _my_ hero. But I do deserve that. I deserve good things, because I— am good. At least, I— I’m trying _really hard_ to believe that I am. Because I’m not responsible for my father, or anything he did. I’m not him. I’m just... me.”

James brushed a tear from Winn’s cheek with his thumb. “There’s nothing _just_ about you.”

Winn’s mouth curved into an almost-smile, soft and full of hope. “You’re right. And you were right earlier; bad things _can_ make you strong... if you’re not alone.”

**Author's Note:**

> not the best choice to write from the perspective of the white computer boy when the source material has such beautiful and complex characters of color and women in its line-up, but the moment winn revealed his backstory my own dad trauma lit up like the damn bat signal, no offense to superman intended. did not go into this cw show expecting to identify hardcore with the sidekick, but i really should have known. so i gift to you this incredibly self-serving holiday projection, if not with a receipt, then at least with the promise of something better in the future.
> 
> sufganiyot is a traditional sephardic hanukkah dish, and delicious to boot. national park is a bad joke about central park. sapphardic is a super good joke about sephardic lesbians. as space beings whose senses are heightened astronomically by our yellow sun, and also as neurodivergents, kara has sensory processing disorder, and kal-el is autistic. no one is straight, and winn wants to kiss on every alien just a little bit before he dies. title comes from jane lynch's song of the same name. thank you so much for reading, and i hope you have a wonderful, warm winter season. happy holigays!


End file.
